Summary Of The Middle Ground By Richard White

Native Americans have lived in the Americas before most people even knew about the land itself. Although they could survive in the wilderness, life as a Native American definitely was not easy. In the book “The Middle Ground”, by Richard White, he describes the lives of each tribe of Native Americans within the region surrounding the Great Lakes known as the pays d’en haut. It takes place during the time period of 1650-1815. For some tribes, they tried to remain peaceful, while other tribes would do unbelievably cruel things to other tribes. Growing up in school we all learned about Christopher Columbus and I am sure most people know the jingle “In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue”. Although the book takes place about 200 years later, we

White talks about some of the cruel things that they would do. For example, the book talks about this group called the Senecas. The Senecas destroyed the village of the Miamis. After destroying the village they then took the women and children that they found within the village. As the Senecas traveled, every morning they would take one of the Miami children, in which they took, and would kill one him/her. From there they would take the child’s body and eat it. Also, every night they would take another child from the tribe and put a stick through his/her head. They would leave the poor child’s body on the path facing the village from which the child was from so that when the Miamis would come to look for the child, they would know that it was the work of the Senecas. This caused a lot of grief within the Miami community and it caused them to want revenge on the Seneca’s. Unfortunately, alone they would not stand a chance. That is when they teamed up with the European’s, due to the fact that the Europeans had stronger weapons that would enable them to overthrow the Iroquois

All my life I have learned very little about the Indian tribes. To be honest the most history my teacher taught me about Indians in high school was all about the life of Sacagawea. To be able to learn more about the Indians was a great experience. My reasoning behind this is that I personally love to learn about new things and broaden my knowledge. I especially have not learned of many good white-Indian relations. This book was surprising to me. Throughout my schooling, I have always learned of how horrible the Europeans were to the Indians. My teachers would stress to me how deceitful they were toward the Native American tribes. Although these statements are extremely true, the Indians were not as peaceful as I was taught they were. See the Indians were known as “savages” to the Americans. Now you might that that is harsh, as I have always thought, but they really were if you think about it. In the Indian culture they would scalp people and torture their enemies, which was normal for them. They literally grew up in the woods. That was normal for them though because of their culture. Now in American culture that is weird to us. That would be an offense. The Europeans that came here grew up in houses that they built themselves. Indians lived in shacks made from material in the woods. Americans used guns as weapons, while the Indian tribes used man-made spears and rocks. Indians would make